Cultural Industries and their Applicability in Central and Eastern Europe: An Institutional Critique

Abstract

This article is motivated by the specific and largely dissatisfactory state of the application of modern conceptions of local and regional development in post-transformation countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The same holds true for cultural industries, which became a buzzword and a sign of socioeco-nomically more successful places and regions. The main objective of this paper is to examine selected issues related to the application of cultural industries in Central and Eastern Europe. Conceptions cha-racterizing cultural industries have been born in advanced countries in the West. Subsequently, their applications consider standard Western economic-institutional milieu that evolved naturally and in the longer run. Nonetheless, history matters and economic-institutional settings in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, for which numerous developmental discontinuities are symptomatic, are far from the Western ones. This raises many question marks on the applicability of cultural industries in specific and still-developing economic-institutional conditions in places and regions in Central and Eastern Eu-rope. The primary perspective adopted in this article is a theoretical one with a wide utilization of qua-litative approaches.